Abstract

Humanistic Intelligence (HI) is a new field of research that challenges the notion that machines such as cameras should emulate human thought. Instead, HI asserts that humans and machines should be inextricably intertwined in a single synergistic unit where the “intelligence” arises directly because of the human in the feedback loop of some (e.g. photographic) decision-making process as described in hi.eecg.toronto.edu/hi.html
Connected Collective Humanistic Intelligence emerges as a new kind of intelligence when multiple humans are in the feedback loop of this process. CCHI challenges J.G. Ballard’s notion that we must choose between social interaction and machine interaction, for it transforms the cyborg entity into part of a community. Moreover CCHI facilitates intimacy and close synergy among individuals separated by vast distances. Most importantly, however, is the ability of the individual or the collective to re-assert itself in the face of hegemonic forces otherwise stripping us of our dignity and humanistic property.

• Steve Mann, Canada, inventor of WearCam (reality mediator), and WearComp, wearable computer, is currently a faculty member at the University of Toronto. Steve has been inventing, designing, and building personal imaging systems as a hobby, since his high school days in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1991 he brought his invention to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and continued this new direction of research there, defining “Personal Imaging” as a new field of research there, in which he received his PhD degree from MIT in 1997. His previous degree is Master of Electrical Engineering (MEng) from McMaster University. Steve also holds undergraduate degrees in physics (BSc) and electrical engineering (BEng) from McMaster University. He was guest-editor of a special issue on wearable computing and personal imaging in Personal Technologies journal, one of four organizers of the ACM’s first international workshop on wearable computing, publications chair for the IEEE international symposium on wearable computing (ISWC-97), and gave the keynote address for the first International Conference on Wearable Computing (ICWC98). His present research interests include quantagraphic imaging, lightspace rendering, and wearable, tetherless computer-mediated photography. He is currently setting up a new “Humanistic Intelligence” lab to “invent the camera of the future”, and is now looking for graduate students and staff for this project. Steve is interested in both the visual and interrogative arts and his work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums from 1985 to present. However, much of his current artistic efforts take on a “surveillance situationist” approach, outside the tradational domain of the gallery or museum; see: www.wearcomp.org/art.html or genesis.eecg.toronto.edu/lvac/index.htm